Bet Your Bones

April 1, 2011

Will the bride walk down an aisle of lava?

In planning her second wedding in Hawaii, Claude Ann hasn't anticipated a few minor distractions. Dinah, her BFF and maid of honor, is still feeling guilty about the little lie that propelled Claude Ann into her first marriage. Her daughter from that union, egged on by her ex, has turned into a Bible-thumping brat who considers her a harlot. Her ex has jerry-rigged a bucket of blood to douse her when she opens her closet. Her new husband's daughter resents her, his son gives their marriage a year at best and the groom has had to borrow heavily from her to stay solvent until he cashes in on a major real-estate deal that may collapse at the insistence of his first wife's sister that the land contains the bones of an island king and ought to be protected. Meanwhile, the earth is rumbling mightily and streams of lava are inching down the mountain. Can anything else go wrong? You bet. The groom's son-in-law is murdered in a manner that eerily recalls the fate of an archeologist hired to vet the land; one of his business partners learns that he's lost almost everything in Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme; his bride's antique Beretta is stolen; and certain of his past indiscretions come to light, including a charge of rape. There'll be more seismic tremors and a confrontation beside a lava bed before the happy couple exchanges vows on a tropical beach.

The overstuffed plot is slowed down by a tutorial in Hawaiian myths and the career mishaps of Dinah (Bones of Contention, 2009).

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)